Comparison

Brushes vs Realistic Paint Studio

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Brushes

This app offers a powerful digital painting and sketching experience with a modern interface and advanced features. Create detailed artwork with customizable brushes, layers, and color tools. Optimized for Apple Pencil and various devices.

Highlights
  • Customizable parameterized brushes
  • Advanced layer management
  • Apple Pencil support with pressure curve
  • Light and dark mode interface
  • Unlimited undo/redo
  • Cloud Drive import/export
Read full description

Brushes 4 is the latest iteration of the app that started the iPhone and iPad painting revolution. Redesigned with a clean and modern user interface, Brushes supports iPhone and iPad with optimisation for the iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone Pro and iPad with Apple Pencil. • Highlights: - Clean and modern user interface with light and dark modes. - Files based painting gallery. - New canvas interface. - Apple Pencil support with pressure curve. – Unlimited undo and redo. - Continuous auto-save. - Cloud Drive import and export. • Parameterized Brushes: - Selection of ready to use brushes with customisable settings. - Create your own custom brushes from millions of permutations. - Generate random brushes for inspiration. - Dynamic adjustment of brush size and opacity. • Layers: - Layer your artwork for greater control. – Lock and hide layers. – Use alpha lock to only paint where pixels already exist. – Adjust individual layer opacity. – Duplicate, rearrange and merge layers. – Apply layer blending modes: normal, multiply, screen, exclude. - Color fill any layer. – Invert layer color and desaturate. – Flip and arbitrarily transform layers. – Adjust the color balance per layer. – Adjust layer hue, saturation and brightness. • Colors: - Colour picker with hue ring and saturation square. - Store and recall your favourite colors in swatches. - Sample painting colors with the eyedropper tool. • Apple Pencil: - Intuitive and powerful pressure curve to match your style. - Configurable realtime pressure based adjustment of brush size and opacity. • Creation: - Preset canvas sizes for paper, photographs, iPhone and iPad screens, film and television displays. - Custom canvas size. • Import, export and sharing: - Import images directly from your camera roll. - Import PNG and JPEG images from cloud services. - Export your paintings for sharing or importing into other apps as PNG and JPEG to all cloud storage services or as photos directly to your camera roll. - Compatible with paintings created by Brushes 3 and Brushes Redux. • Light and dark appearances: - Choose between light and dark monochrome appearances, or current system setting. - Minimal use of user interface color so that tints in the user interface do not distract from or influence your artwork color choices. Acknowledgements. Thank you to Angela Ali, Jason M., Jeff Parker, Sandra Perez and Yoshiyuki Uchida for contributing artwork to the App Store screenshots. Please visit our website to see more of their artwork and for links to their portfolios. History. Brushes was originally created by Steve Sprang for iPhone in 2009 and for iPad in 2010. His last version, Brushes 3 was released in 2012, but was removed from the App Store in 2015. I took over development to modernise and support an app that has continued to be enjoyed by so many artists.

About

Realistic Paint Studio

This digital art software offers a familiar art station experience with realistic brushes, pencils, and markers. It allows users to create art in drawing, watercolor, and oil painting styles with a unique color engine and diverse canvas textures. Step-by-step tutorials and live demonstrations guide users through the creative process.

Highlights
  • Realistic color engine
  • Drawing, Watercolor, Oil Painting styles
  • Realistic brushes and tools
  • Realistic canvases with diverse textures
  • Live demonstration of drawing methods
  • Step-by-step tutorials
Read full description

Realistic Paint Studio is a unique digital art software. The program combines the simplicity of traditional tools and pioneering innovations in digital art. No special education is required to work in Realistic Paint Studio. The interface is designed to show a familiar art station with real paper, brushes, pencils, pens, and markers, etc. instead of a complicated and hard-to-understand graphic editor. With Realistic Paint Studio you will forget that you are using a digital editor, being completely absorbed in the art process! Easy-to-use, yet powerful engine allows to draw and paint in any desirable style! - "Realistic color" - Unique color engine! - 3 creative styles: Drawing, Watercolor, Oil Painting "Realistic brushes" carefully designed to convey all the nuances of real brushes, pencils, pens, markers, etc. - “Realistic showcase” - You can instantly have a look at your picture within a beautiful scene - “Realistic Canvases” - 15 types of sketchbooks, paper sheets, and canvases with 45 different textures scanned from real materials. - “Realistic palettes” - Most of the brushes have their own palette's presets. - “Live demonstration” - Instant demonstration of drawing methods for the selected tool - Live liquid watercolor drops - Step by step tutorials - Сoloring with the edge control function

Screenshots

Brushes4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Brushes at $3.99 against Realistic Paint Studio's $11.99. Brushes also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 12) and chart position (#82 vs unranked). Realistic Paint Studio's advantage is review sentiment (67% vs 57%) and ratings volume (735 vs 177). On rating, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Brushes costs $3.99 and Realistic Paint Studio $11.99 up front. Realistic Paint Studio sells 12 one-off in-app purchases. Brushes asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Brushes against 4.7 for Realistic Paint Studio. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 177 and 735 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 57% of Brushes's written reviews are positive against 67% of Realistic Paint Studio's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Brushes ships an update every 6 weeks, Realistic Paint Studio every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 20, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard8 real differences · 3 level
Brushes versus Realistic Paint Studio: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBrushesRealistic Paint Studio
Price$3.99 — better$11.99
Rating4.6 (177 ratings)4.7 (735 ratings) — better
Positive reviews57.1% of reviews67.3% of reviews — better
Number of ratings177735 — better
Update frequencyEvery 6 weeksEvery 5 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
Best chart rank#82 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPad
Requires iOS13.011.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size13 MB1005 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperEnvozaAleksandr Komarov

Customer experience

Brushes

All ratings177 ratings
Positive91.5%
Neutral2.8%
Negative5.6%
Written reviews42 reviews
Positive57.1%
Neutral9.5%
Negative33.3%

Realistic Paint Studio

All ratings735 ratings
Positive92.8%
Neutral4.4%
Negative2.9%
Written reviews343 reviews
Positive67.3%
Neutral16.3%
Negative16.3%

User reviews

Brushes

From 177 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🎨 Great for detailed drawings
  • ✨ Simple and intuitive interface
  • 💨 Fast and fun to use
  • 🖌️ Unique 'Brushes look'
  • 💰 Excellent value for price

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Brush tip issues (square instead of fade)
  • 💾 Auto-save malfunctions
  • 🎛️ Poor brush size control (fine detail)
  • ⚫ Difficulty getting a true black line
  • 🔄 Not an improvement on original

Realistic Paint Studio

From 735 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🎨 Realistic and immersive painting experience
  • 👍 Intuitive and user-friendly interface
  • 🎨 Excellent brush dynamics and color blending
  • 🎨 Wide variety of traditional media tools
  • 🎨 Aesthetically pleasing presentation

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Frequent crashes and stability issues
  • 🔋 High battery consumption
  • 🔒 Limited export options (no PSD, no transparent background)
  • 🔒 Restricted canvas size and resolution
  • 🔒 Lack of customization for brushes and tools

Bugs and requests

Brushes

Reported bugs

9 issues
  • Brush tips not staying (switching to square)
  • Auto-save not working
  • Cannot place images from gallery
  • Brush size slider jumps
  • Circular lines icon appears unexpectedly
Show 4 more
  • App quits unexpectedly without saving
  • Canvas doesn't rotate
  • Won't load photos
  • Empty app after purchase

Requested features

6 requests
  • More save color slots
  • Full Chinese menu translation
  • Instructions/manual
  • Smudge tool
  • Documentation
Show 1 more
  • Screen rotation feature

Realistic Paint Studio

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Crashes when using the camera feature
  • Inconsistent behavior with the undo/redo function
  • Issues with the color mixing in the palette
  • Delayed response and lag when using Apple Pencil

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add support for PSD export with layers
  • Implement canvas rotation and resizing options
  • Allow for more brush customization and pressure sensitivity
  • Improve color picker and palette functionality
  • Introduce a simple, distraction-free canvas mode

In-app purchases

None

Brushes

No in-app purchases

12 purchases

Realistic Paint Studio

One-time12
  • Artistic brushFree
  • Mechanical penFree
  • Glitz penFree
Show 9 more
  • Glass penFree
  • Fountain penFree
  • Calligraphy brushFree
  • Hieroglyph brushFree
  • Diamond brushFree
  • Album with six color sheetsFree
  • All brushes from the VIP boxFree
  • Dragon brush$0.99
  • Crystal brush$0.99

Questions

Is Brushes free?
Brushes costs $3.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Realistic Paint Studio free?
Realistic Paint Studio costs $11.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Brushes or Realistic Paint Studio?
Realistic Paint Studio is rated higher. Brushes averages 4.6 out of 5 from 177 ratings, while Realistic Paint Studio averages 4.7 from 735 ratings.
Do Brushes or Realistic Paint Studio have ads?
Neither Brushes nor Realistic Paint Studio shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Brushes or Realistic Paint Studio?
Brushes ships an update every 6 weeks, and Realistic Paint Studio every 5 weeks. Most recently, Brushes was updated on September 24, 2026 and Realistic Paint Studio on September 20, 2026.

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